Tinto Versus Odiel: Two A.M.D. Polluted Rivers and an Unresolved Issue. An Artificial Intelligence Approach

J. Grande (), J. Aroba, J. Andújar, T. Gómez, M. Torre, J. Borrego, S. Romero, C. Barranco and M. Santisteban

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA), 2011, vol. 25, issue 14, 3575-3594

Abstract: The Iberian Pyrite Belt (SW Spain) is a highly relevant source of Acid Mine Drainage contamination on a global scale. Although the Tinto and Odiel Rivers, which cross the Iberian Pyrite Belt, have been widely studied by various authors, an issue is still pending: the study of the metal load distribution undergone by each of these rivers and, hence, the establishment of cause-effect relationships between the transported load in the final sections of both rivers, upstream of the tidal influence limits, and the characteristics of the input in each of the basins. To solve this, a water sampling campaign was conducted on both rivers on a daily basis from mid September 2007 to the end of May 2008, where pH, conductivity, redox potential, As, Cd, Fe, Cu, Zn, Mn and sulfate were analyzed. The results were treated with the PreFurGe tool, which is based on Fuzzy Logic. This showed that the order of abundance for the parameters analyzed for the Odiel River is SO 4 >Zn>Mn>Fe>Cu>Cd>As, whereas for the Tinto River it is SO 4 >Fe>Cu>Zn>Mn>Cd>As. This last pattern coincides with the order of abundance of elements in Pyrite. In the Tinto River, the metal with the highest rate is Fe, which presents mean values of 361.1 mg/L, whereas in the Odiel River iron mean concentration is 5.34 mg/L. This difference is due to higher precipitation of oxyhydroxysulfates of iron in the Odiel River as a result of the higher intensity of neutralization processes. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Keywords: Acid mine drainage; Iberian Pyrite Belt; Artificial intelligence; Fuzzy logic; Tinto River; Odiel River (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s11269-011-9871-5 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:waterr:v:25:y:2011:i:14:p:3575-3594

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/11269

DOI: 10.1007/s11269-011-9871-5

Access Statistics for this article

Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) is currently edited by G. Tsakiris

More articles in Water Resources Management: An International Journal, Published for the European Water Resources Association (EWRA) from Springer, European Water Resources Association (EWRA)
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().